The Leadership Tips and Teamwork blog is written to provide inspiration, insight and sage advice to people in the workplace. Its particular focus is on using the concepts of Quality and Lead Management on the job. It also discusses the special application of these concepts in schools and the educational field in general. Basically, the idea is to balance one’s focus between creating a need satisfying environment at work for yourself and your workers and always striving to improve one’s offered products or services.

April 25, 2007

Stereotypes

I'd like to talk about diversity in the workplace. This has been a hot
topic for at least the past 15 years and I am committed to the notion
of equality and fairness for all, including white males. After all,
isn’t that what our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the
words, “All men are created equal”? Do you think they only meant white-skinned, Protestant, eastern European males? Let’s hope not. What I
believe is that most of the isms (racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) come
from two camps---ignorance from a lack of direct experience and fear.

Those who fall into the first category are people who are basing their
belief system on very limited and possibly negative experiences with
members of the target group or no direct experience at all. Our
allegiance to our biases may come from loyalty or connection to others
who have expressed strong prejudices against the target group. When we
are raised in a household or a segment of society where stereotypes are
freely expressed about a particular group, then it becomes
uncomfortable to stand against those belief systems, particularly when
it leaves us standing against loved ones and those we have known our
whole lives.

Also, it’s possible to have had a single or a few negative experiences
with members of a particular group. It’s human nature to distance
ourselves from wrongdoing so when we are involved in a negative
experience, we attempt to categorize how our offender is different from
us. If we can latch onto race, ethnicity, gender or age, then it’s
somehow a relief to be separated from the perpetrator. The problem with
this, however, is that we are developing broad, generalized prejudicial
beliefs about a group of people that is based on just one or a few of
its members.

How would you like to be judged by what a few members of
your identified group do? Have you ever been judged by something someone else did? Have you had to overcome stereotypes and biases you picked up from others that you later learned were untrue? What are your experiences.